This week, ClickBack sought editorial page reader comments on campaign finance and Bangor’s decision to hire a local city manager.
Should Congress limit campaign spending?
We already live in a plutocracy. It will take some kind of fundamental and revolutionary action to change this now. I suggest implementing a 90 percent tax on all funds spent attempting to influence our elections and governance.
—kcjonez
Corporate personhood should be rescinded by the Supreme Court. That would take care of issues like this.
—mAineAc
The politicians do the bidding of the people who pay to keep them in power, and the BDN (along with all its media relatives) gets a big paycheck every couple of years from all this political spending. Who are we going to get to watch the henhouse?
—VOLDENUIT
It is disturbing that so many people support unlimited spending on election campaigns. Although those contributing big money would howl with indignation if there was any suggestion they were attempting to buy future political favors (perish the thought), you know the old saying, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.”
Under no circumstances do I support taxpayer money being used for elections. We get clobbered enough already. Let the candidates pay for their own campaigns, then let’s see how many of these never-ending, relentlessly stupid TV commercials we would be bombarded with.
—DanS1154
Congress could cut the election costs for itself by doubling the time in office for House members from two to four years. As it stands now, we elect a Michaud and only get about a year’s work out of him and a year of campaigning or fundraising so that he can get re-elected.
Or we could look across the pond and follow England’s system. If we are dissatisfied, we can call for new elections.
The Supreme Court has screwed up royally by granting corporations and unions the status of personhood. It is up to Congress to fix this problem by pushing for an amendment to the Constitution barring idiocy like this ruling.
—patom1
The ruling declaring corporations to be persons is unwise to say the least. That’s being polite; I could call it worse.
—gopher40
Was Bangor wise to hire a local city manager?
I won’t say anything negative about Ms. Conley because I don’t know her or her record in Orono. However, I am disappointed to learn of the money the city council frivolously spent only to hire someone in our own backyard. You may have thought they would have looked closer to home before they looked outside.
—Jeff C
I feel it is a poor idea to hire non-New England town managers for New England cities and towns. We already have lost too much of what once was our regional identity.
There was a time in the 1980s when not one major New England city had a manager from within the six-state region. Let’s hope Bangor is an example of new regional pride.
—HarryHSynderIII
Town managers masquerade as nonpartisan but are very partisan. Their only oversight is a very amateur town board or city council. This allows managers get away with way too much.
In a mayoral system, citizens take more interest in their local government, and city councils and town boards attract a better quality of candidate than the pitiful pedestrians we see running local government in Maine. Besides, if you don’t like the way a mayor runs the city, vote him or her out.
—Hussar